Top 10 Christmas ideas for high street businesses
The Christmas period is now officially in full swing. With the last 2 festive periods being slightly derailed, this year seems like a return to the normality of Christmas.
With this in mind, we’ve created a list of our Top 10 Christmas Ideas for High Street Businesses. Having these in place for the festive period and beyond will be sure to have a positive impact on our high streets.
Without further-ado, let’s go…
1. Window Displays
Does your window displays embrace the festive season? If not, it’s better late than never by redesigning your displays. This can be as simple as adding some tinsel, Christmas accessories, fake snow, or go all out & add a tree!
2. Sales & Discounts
With Black Friday Cyber Monday now over, and loads of last minute shoppers still looking for a good deal on presents, having things on sales & discounts will help to draw in customers both in-person and online.
3. Late Night Shopping Events
Always check out the latest updates from your favourite High Street shops to find out store opening times and late night events.
4. Email Newsletters
Create engaging email newsletters to welcome new email subscribers, share news, discounts and more to promote your business online and in-store. We recommend signing up to Mailchimp, where you’ll be able to use the free subscription to create engaging emails from scratch, or their easy to use templates.
5. Eliminate Overspend
As the year approaches a close, now is the perfect time to review your spending this year. Perhaps there are some areas where you can cut back? Why not join our Accelerator, where we’ve been able to help high street businesses re-negotiate their leases, and reduce their utility costs.
6. Google Business Profile
The hidden gem of social media, is not really a social media platform. However, if there’s anything we’ve wanted to get across to high street businesses this year – it’s that your Google Business Profile should be treated like one. To start, make sure you have one set up, and that all your information is accurate and detailed as possible. Include logos, images of your shopfront, as well as inside, contact information & opening times. Once that foundation is in place, the next thing to do is get your customers to leave 5-star reviews. Not only will it give you social proof in comparison to competitors, it signals to Google that you’re a high authority – trustworthy business. Once that’s in place, the cherry on top is to also upload posts and special offers on your Google Business Profile like you would on your other social media channels. As a result of all of this, Google will reward you by helping your business rank higher on Google Search & Google Maps. If there was one social media platform we would recommend you putting effort in with the biggest impact, it would be this.
7. Create a loyalty scheme
Why not encourage your customers to return with an incentive? A loyalty scheme is the perfect route for this. Depending on your product/service, you could offer discounts after certain orders, or even go as far as to offer something for free to reward loyalty.
8. Make your website e-commerce ready
If you have a website that doesn’t allow users to pay for a product/service, then this should be one of the biggest priorities before Christmas. Most website builders will have e-commerce functionality that can be added with easy to follow guides to get things in place. If you don’t have a website to begin with and want an e-commerce website, we would highly recommend going with Shopify, as it’s user friendly & easy to create a quick website with limited knowledge by using one of their sleek templates.
9. Add Click & Collect to your website
Instead of relying on sending out every online order, why not incorporate a personal approach by giving local customers the option to click & collect instead? You’ll then be able to learn more about your customers, potentially up-sell different things in-store, and increase the chances of repeat purchases.
10. Flyers
Last, but definitely not least – flyers. Creating some quick, festive-inspired flyers that shares some info on your business, product/service, possibly an incentive & call to action should be a great way to turn local footfall to local customers.
We can help you with all of the above, and more on our all-new high street business accelerator where you’ll get specialist help to increase your profit in 60 days.
